Using two approaches—the weight of each gender's denunciations on the trial's outcome and the sequence of hearings—we found that inquisitor A. of Castellario showed no greater interest in women. He focused predominantly on men, despite evidence of active, committed women in the Waldensian community.

🧵Recent historiography examines women's roles in the Inquisition. While women were central targets during the early modern witch hunts, our study investigates if a similar preoccupation with female suspects emerged in medieval religious persecutions.
doi.org/10.1017/ssh....

#Medieval #Inquisition

Besides offering a stark portrait of Spain's intra-history (below is an excerpt from one of the book’s final passages), the book raises uncomfortable yet necessary questions: Should we accept victims' testimonies (the witness's blackmail), or should historians/scholars be allowed to contradict them?

🧵During the Memoria Histórica movement's heyday, I asked about my family's Civil War past. Someone said: You might not like what you find. Cercas' book has helped me comprehend: Why bother facing a mundane truth when time and victimhood allow you to craft heroic family myths—like everyone else does?

Some historians have wondered how heretic groups survived centuries of persecution. Our tentative answer: the Church’s interrogation methods targeted family-based solidarity, but local social structures limited their impact, showing that the medieval Inquisition was ill-equipped to suppress heresy.

Using DyNAMs (actor-oriented REMs), we examine how deponents acted throughout the trial. As the inquisitor increased pressure, they became more likely to denounce social contacts. Still, they tried to protect others by targeting those already denounced, publicly named suspects, or those who had fled

🧵Not long ago, @pnasnexus.org featured this paper!
doi.org/10.1093/pnas...

In this study, we analyze endogeneity in denunciation patterns, using records from a 14th-century inquisitorial trial in Piedmont (Italy), which involved around 250 local residents.
#socialnetworks #denunciation #inquisition

The second tweak: Many core-periphery networks present fractures within the core. However, the original model assumes full connectivity. We solved this issue with the p-core extension, which permits flexibility in intra-core connectivity (the proportion of core members each member is connected to).

Our first tweak was density blocks for inter-categorical ties. Unlike the original method (which often treats such ties as missing), d-blocks don’t mess up the GoF metric. Plus, they allow researchers to set a minimum acceptable density, adding control over an extra feature of the partition sought.

🧵New paper out in Social Networks
doi.org/10.1016/j.so...

Many social, political, and economic systems have a core-periphery structure. Borgatti & Everett’s model has been the go-to for identifying them in network data. Here, @carln.bsky.social & I build on this classic model with two refinements.